A digital media playback device typically includes a handheld device such as an MP3 player. Some MP3 players are implemented as software programs on Personal Computers. Handheld MP3 players have limited memory sizes that can consist of Flash Memory, dynamic RAM memory and rotating CD-ROM memory. However, these types of MP3 players have required that the user/consumer must manage the memory content (also known as playlists) on the MP3 Player.
This manual management of the memory content has restricted the use of these devices only to users/consumers that are computer literate and are able to manage the storage on the various types of memory in the MP3 device. For example in typical MP3 player there may be ‘internal memory’ that is built-in to the device when it is manufactured and Flash Memory (sometimes in the form of Smart Media cards) which is inserted into the device by the user/consumer after a separate purchase. The user/consumer must be cognizant of the various types of memory in the device and the limitations of the capacity of the devices. In addition, the digital media players were envisioned to only handle the playback of music files. However, there are many more types of digital media than music. For example, there is spoken audio that falls in the categories of News, Weather, Sports, Traffic and Entertainment. Thus, it would be desirable to automatically manage all of the memory space for the electronic media files for the consumer/user. Furthermore, it would be desirable to automatically partition the disparate memories into logical sub-devices that handle different categories of digital media.